


Goodnight, sweetheart.

by Sherry_CS



Category: Finder no Hyouteki | Finder Series
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon Divergence, Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-25 01:52:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16187633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sherry_CS/pseuds/Sherry_CS
Summary: AU where Yoh is an undercover cop. Lots of angst, but Yoh can be a romantic bastard when he chooses to. Feilong is the badass gangster that he is. He could so be an alpha if he weren’t so pretty haha... I thought Yoh should get the attention he deserves, so here ‘tis.





	Goodnight, sweetheart.

**Author's Note:**

> At first I just wanted to do a short Yoh&Fei smut scene cuz I thought... poor Yoh, you never get any action in my or other people’s works! And you are such a good guy! Well, then it sprawled out into this... four parts of almost pure angst and NO sex (except for some passing allusions to it). Poor Yoh. Better luck next time :)

"You always find me at my weakest. Sometimes I resent that about you.” The man said.

“You wouldn’t need me at any other hour,” said the other man, breathing out his smoke.

“That’s not true,” blinked the long-haired beauty, naked in all his glory, “I don’t need you even then.” He said with a mischievous smile, nipping the cigarette away from the other man’s fingertips and putting it between his own lips, bruised and broken from all the hard kissing and nibbling. He slowly breathed in the nicotine, felt it saturate his inner being, and confessed in a whisper, “you just make it more bearable somehow."

For all his delicacy and grace, the man could be a brute, but his faithful lover knew him too well to be bothered in the least. Instead, he gently brushed away the man’s silky black hair cascading over his shoulder (smooth and fair like polished jade), and leaned down to kiss him on the top of his head. “Was that only bearable?” He asked in quiet glee.

His lover straightened a bit and raised a perfectly shaped brow. “My, my, I dare say you’re a changed man. Is that what fleeing to Taiwan, disgracing yourself working as a common bouncer for the dingiest club in town, sweating it off seven nights a week, resurfacing only to collect bits and pieces about a bygone drug dealer does to a man?"

“If it pleases you.” The man in question answered simply.

If it pleases me. The long-haired man fell silent, and squeezed back up against his ex-bodyguard’s broad chest. If it pleases me.

He got up.

“Do you want something to drink? Water? Tea? Whiskey?” He turned around and smiled his effortlessly bewitching smile, tucking his hair back behind his earlobe, completely casual, completely unaware of the effect these actions were having on his all too fervent lover, who promptly sat up to admire his gently swaying ass as he strolled down to the kitchen island.

“Come back here and I’ll gobble you up, again.”

The man who now busied himself with the cold brewing tea at the sleek modern kitchen island chuckled good-heartedly. “I must say I quite enjoy this new you. How hard it must have been for you to suppress this fun side of yours for seven years.”

Yoh got up, got off the bed, and joined his lover/ex-employer/sole deity of his universe, by the polished black table. “You have no idea.”

“I have some.” His deity leaned across the mirror-like surface and offered him a decidedly dirty kiss on the mouth, and asked, “but tell me, do I still get to see it after tomorrow?”

The ex-bodyguard’s face darkened for a split second, his expression a careful combination of a soldier’s stoicness and a lover’s wistfulness. At long last, he answered, “I can’t promise you much, but this I do: I’ll wager my life between you and any danger. And when I can afford it, I’ll be fun.” He even managed a grin.

They sipped the cool jasmine tea without saying a word. Then the long-haired man broke the silence, “you know, I never figured you for a cop.”

“Feilong.”

“No, I’m not resenting it, gods forbid. You’d look good in a uniform.” He gave his partner a playful grin, something so rarely seen on him that nobody would’ve suspected it existed. “I just, you know, never doubted you for it.”

His partner walked around the table and wrapped him in an almost choking embrace from behind. Their warm naked skin gently vibrated against each other at the contact. Yoh buried his face in the soft rich velvet of his lover’s hair, and said in a low whisper, “I’m sorry. I wish…”

“Don’t.” His lover touched his face with his long elegant fingers, now cooled by the tea, “if you chose otherwise, I would’ve despised you for it.” And he meant it.

In five hours they were to appear at the bay, the other family heads would be there, there would be ‘merchandise', lots of ‘merchandise', and then there would be an explosion, a crossfire. The police. Someone from one of the OTHER triads was to be identified as the traitor. More crossfire. Feilong was to fight vehemently but sadly be hit, and fall conveniently into the South China Sea. Yoh was to die trying to save him.

And then, they would meet each other again at the Hong Kong Police Headquarters. By then, of course, the majority of the Hong Kong crime lords would have been captured or shot dead, and Feilong would bet his last penny that those surviving would all be secretly counting on _him_ to save them, somehow.

Perfect plan. It had only one flaw. They actually thought Feilong would follow through.

It’s true they had captured Yanyan, that his testimony alone was enough to incriminate Feilong and many more, so that fight or no fight, he would find himself at the Hong Kong Police Force’s mercy once again, and soon. It is also true they had secured Tao, had him tailed 24/7, to eliminate Feilong’s doubts as they said, but the Baishe leader knew better. Tao was their trump card. As long as they had _him_ , Feilong simply MUST do as they pleased.

…or must he?

His eyes gleamed where Yoh could not see. He buttoned up his cheongsam, the one he wore on the night of the casino ship, the one with the cranes on it. He tied his hair up in a low ponytail. He did all of that with calculated ease. Then he waited. He turned around when he heard the thud. Sure as planned, Yoh was lying on the kitchen floor, the unfinished tea spilled all over the table and dripping off by the edge, the glass a mess of broken pieces about his body.

Feilong paced over, and looked down.

“Oh, you really should’ve put some clothes on. How can I let anyone see you like this?” Feilong mused out loud. He yanked the bigger man up with no problem, threw him in a nearby chair, one that he had sat in earlier as Yoh made him coffee this very afternoon at this very work table, before the scene went on to unwrap somewhere else, tied his hands to the back of the chair with the ropes he had carried in from the bedroom, dressed the guy in the jeans that Feilong had personally peeled off with his teeth and hands a few hours ago, and stepped back to admire his work.

He took a moment to finish his tea, then he woke his captive up with a fierce backhand to the face, vicious enough to cause the man’s mouth to bleed instantly.

“Don’t do this,” were the first words his victim uttered as he came to, his speech a little slurred under the effect of the drug.

“You know I must.” The man who had cuddled up his body just minutes ago said with cold impersonality.

“Baishe is an illusion. Don’t die protecting it."

“Justice is an illusion, and you are going to die protecting it.” Feilong produced his favourite Beretta and pressed the muzzle against Yoh’s left chest, where his heart was.

“You could start again.”

“I don’t WANT to start again!” Feilong bellowed with rage, “this is who I am. This is who I was made to be. The man you had fallen in love with is an illusion. You better take a good look at the real me before you die.”

“How do you plan to get out of this anyway? Yanyan is with us. The other families will be there. The operation will go ahead as planned and you won’t be there. How does that make you look? You will have to go into hiding, with the underworld _and_ the justice at your heels, and you can’t take Tao with you. And what’s all this for anyway? A leadership you never wanted, an assembly you could not trust, a responsibility that is wearing you down, a ghost of a history that sends you screaming awake more nights than I care to count, and the loneliness, gods, the loneliness… You were never made for the crime world, why can’t you let go while you can?”

“Have you learnt nothing in all the seven years serving by my side?” Feilong’s voice turned to stoney ice, “Baishe is _all_  I was made for. The sole reason why I’m alive. There is no letting go because... how do you crawl out of your own skin and rip out your own heart? I _**am**_  Baishe. You can’t crush one without shattering the other.”

The simple truth of it made Yoh shudder a little. His stoic posture swayed, and his face was not a mask of pure steel any more. “I wish I could just take you away. The moment I laid my eyes on you, I knew my old laws had crumbled, and you stood atop the rubble, the glorious new god of my universe. Believe me when I say that there is nothing more frustrating in this world than not being able to break your own oath. Even when my heart wants to, my soul will not allow it."

“And you are adorable that way.” Feilong stepped close, kneeled in front of his lover/captive, his left hand resting intimately on the man’s knee while his right hand tilted the gun higher to press it up against his chin. “In another life, in another world, maybe we could be… something more. Something different. But in this life… I am sorry. Maybe I should’ve killed you on that deck after all.” He took a step back, lifted the gun and pointed it directly at the man’s forehead. “Goodnight, sweetheart.” And he pulled the trigger.

————

When he wakes up, he is in a steely white room. The first thing he registers in his mind is the utter silence around him. And then the faint, dull antiseptic smell. The cuffs around his wrists. That pretty much gives him an idea where he is. He looks down and realises he is still in his crane-embroidery cheongsam, which appears to be clean and untouched. His feet are not in restraint. He doesn’t feel any part of his body aching or bleeding. These things give him some idea about the attitude his enemy is taking towards him. When he is ready, he raises his head.

The Hong Kong Police Headquarters’ special interrogation room. He’s been here. The last time was seven years ago, and it was a prearranged session, one that was not meant to last long, before he was taken to prison under his own accord. This time, he’s sure it won’t be that easy.

In front of him is a wall that he knows is a one-way mirror, around him only whiteness. He is in the middle of the room, sitting on a rather uncomfortable steel chair. There is not even a table in front of him. They have gone out of their way to make sure there is no weapon he could use in this room. Well, we’ll see about that yet.

He looks into the wall in front of him, and asks in a neutral tone. “When did you know?” He knows he’s being watched, and he knows by whom.

A second’s pause. Then a voice sounds in the room. It’s Yoh’s. “The moment you said yes.”

Feilong laughs a deliberately intimate laugh. “To the plan or to the sex? Or was the sex part of the plan?”

On the other side of the mirror, Yoh could sense the subtle change of atmosphere around him, but he ignores it. This is just one of Feilong’s tactics, and he knows most of them well. “To the plan. You would never give up Baishe. That you would go so far as to even consider my proposal meant you had something else in mind.”

“Well, bravo. You have not learnt nothing in all the seven years serving under me after all. Not so obtuse as you make out to be.”

“Now, Feilong, if you please…”

“Don’t call me by my name. You have forfeited that right.” Feilong sits up straight and spreads his shoulders. A dragon in captivity is still a dragon. The Baishe leader's superiority is so absolute that it breaks through the glass and grips everyone on the other side by the throat. Yoh could say that for an instant their roles are switched, that he is tied up and held in one of Baishe’s own interrogation rooms, which are considerably damper, darker, and more ominous than this one.

“You switched the tea.” The Dragon continues, paying no attention to Yoh’s earlier attempt at leading the conversation.

“I did.”

“How did you know? I was meticulous.”

“As you always are. But I know you too well.” Yoh takes a deep breath. “You never let your own drink out of your sight for the whole night. You couldn’t help it. If you'd never let down your defense in front of me before, I probably wouldn’t have spotted it. But last night, you weren’t treating me like a friend or an ally, you were treating me like an enemy. It was written loud and clear in all the details of your actions.”

“I don’t recall treating you much like either, friend or ally. You know exactly what you are to me. Or do I have to spell it out for you and your pals?”

“Please, Feilong, none of this is very productive…”

“I’ll be the judge of that. And like I said, do not call me by my name.”

That icy glare almost freezes up the whole room. Those feral eyes on that exquisite feminine face is casting a spell on more people than one in the war room, Yoh could tell. He knows too well those tiny instants when Feilong’s sheer presence sweeps over the whole room, stealing hearts and claiming souls in his wake. The Baishe is less a crime organisation than a religion. The man is a walking Greek tragedy and no one has ever managed to look away.

But in this case, it just won’t do.

Yoh senses someone approaching him from behind. He turns around, thinking it’s his Superintendent, Stephen J., who’s been his sole point of contact for the past seven years. But instead, he finds the Director himself standing in front of him. The whole room has risen to their feet and Yoh quickly salutes, as does everyone else. “Sir.” His voice and his movement come naturally to him, but they somehow feel foreign, an echo of a past too far gone to bare any real weight on his current existence.

The Director nods to him. “I’ll take it from here.” “Yes, sir.” Yoh retreats to make way for his superior, knowing perfectly well that it’s not in his position to object, but his gaze never leaves the latter as the silver-haired, straight-backed man in his crisp uniform approaches the one-way mirror with a sure purpose to his feet.

He reaches his station, and speaks into the microphone in a deep formidable voice that only someone who’s spent the best thirty years of his life in crime-fighting is able to possess. “Mr. Liu.” His usual hint of command is just barely discernable under the surface.

“Mr. K. L. Cheung.” Feilong’s voice is melodious, accompanied by an undisguised hostility. “What do you have for me this time?”

“What I always do. A suggestion.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Give us your routes and names, in their entirety, and in exchange, we’ll let you live.”

Feilong laughs. “Has Yanyan confided so much?” Because the only reason they could be so confident is that they believe Feilong has nothing to bargain with.

“Enough to send you to prison for a hundred years.”

“Well, what are we waiting for? Your spy must have informed you that living is of no interest to me whatsoever.” There is no trace of bitterness in the Dragon’s voice, but hearing him say that has made Yoh’s heart constrict so hard he almost choked on the spot.

Cheung sighs. “You may have no desire to live, but what about the boy?”

“What about the boy?” Feilong tenses. He knows exactly who.

“He’s your step-brother’s son, isn’t he?” When Feilong refuses to reply, Cheung continues, “We’ve taken the liberty to carry out a DNA test between the two. Their DNA’s match.”

“A fat liberty you’ve taken.” Feilong’s voice is low and dark, a death threat if there ever was one. “How does that have anything to do with this?” He isn’t really asking though, as the answer is pretty obvious.

“Everything.” Cheung begins, “as Baishe’s rightful heir, he is only safe so long as his predecessor and his supporters stand behind him. If Baishe collapses, what do you think would happen to a thirteen-year-old boy, who appears to me to have no knowledge whatsoever of the underworld dealings, who holds the key to the vast fortune and influence that Baishe has managed to acquire through the years? Without you, or his father heralding him, do you think the other houses would willingly offer their allegiance and lay their shares at his feet, or do you think they would seize the first chance they get to do away with him? The triad is not an emperor’s court. There is no real loyalty. The heart only follows where the money goes.”

When Feilong gives no response, either in words or in expression, Cheung continues, “if you work with us, you’ll still go to jail, yes, but we’ll make sure the boy is safe. He will never have to know his true heritage, and he will live, as an ordinary boy, your little page who got lost amid the chaos. But if you don’t…”

“Then what?” Feilong hisses, placing a challenge and a warning.

Cheung sighs again. He seems to like to do that when he is most sure of himself. “Then you leave us no choice. Words will spread on the street that Tao is Liu Yanyan’s son, someone, either from within your organisation or without, will find him and mostly likely establish him as a puppet leader; he will find himself the centre of the storm long before his due, and no one can promise he can come out of it alive. What’s more, I’ll personally make sure you never see him again for the rest of your imprisoned life. Before you get murdered in there, that is. And I suspect that’ll be very soon.”

“You would do that to a little boy.” Feilong is shaking as he speaks these words. “Is that how the Hong Kong Police does things now? If it is, then you are no different from us.”

“We don’t kill for money.” Cheung responds blandly.

“Don’t you? You’d be surprised to know.” Feilong sneers.

Ignoring his remark, Cheung moves on soldierly, “So what do you say? The pathetic blood-soaked little world you try to hold onto that you call your father’s legacy, or your protégé’s safety. Your call.”

For a moment, Feilong sits perfectly still. Fuming, but still. He seems to be taking it all in. Then he takes a deep breath, and speaks in an utterly controlled tone, “I want to see him.”

Cheung seems genuinely surprised. “I would think that at this point, seeing him or not hardly makes a difference.”

“It does to me. I want to make sure the boy is okay. Either you bring him to me, and I might consider what you just said, or it’s no talk at all.” Feilong sits back against the chair, and anyone can see that he means business.

Cheung sighs again, but this time in defeat. He covers the microphone and speaks to an officer. “Bring the boy, would you?”

————

When Tao comes out of the interrogation room, he is a shaking sobbing mess. Yoh steps close and reaches for his shoulder out of sheer habit, and to his utter surprise, the boy spins around and shakes his hand off with a vehemence so strong it reminds him of the boy’s master himself.

“Don’t you touch me. Don’t you touch me again.” The boy seems to be choking on his every word. His eyes are red, his young face is tear-smeared and contorted with pain, his body is shaking visibly. Yoh feels a pang of guilt even though he knows he shouldn’t.

“Come on, boy, let’s get you back to...” Two officers step in and make to escort Tao out of the room, when the boy suddenly lashes out and grips Yoh by his jacket. “How could you? You were the only friend he had! He cared about you! He loved you!”

Yoh was going to kneel down and comfort the boy, but the latter’s words just pinned him to the ground. Tao does not relent. “Don’t look at me like that. Just because you two don’t tell me doesn’t mean I don’t know! And just because I’m thirteen doesn’t mean I don’t understand!”

He pushes Yoh away and makes to run out of the room, when Mr. Cheung grabs him by the shoulders and spins him around with unapologetic force. “Listen to me, boy,” Cheung kneels down and speaks directly into Tao’s sniveling face, “I know you think he is some kind of a father figure to you, but you must know that there are greater things in this world than our immediate relations. Very often what you see is just a slice of the truth, sometimes not even that. You are old enough to tell right from wrong, and you look me in the eye and tell me that you think that man in there is innocent and untainted like the rest of us.”

Tao shakes Cheung’s hands off with astonishing force, and yells into his face, into the whole room, “I don’t CARE if he’s innocent or not. I don’t CARE what he does for a living! I know he is good to me. I know he’s been a father and a brother to me when I have had no family! And I know there are times when he chose to save lives when he could’ve taken them! That is good enough for me. Why isn’t it for you?”

No one answers him. The question is so outlandish it does not even beckon for an answer. Tao forces himself to calm down, and walks up to Yoh, undaunted. “To me, betraying someone’s love and trust is just as serious a crime as any. You look _me_ in the eye and tell me that you think you are innocent and untainted like the rest of us.” When he’s finished, he simply leaves.

Yoh’s gaze follows the boy’s back and wonders, when has that unwitting child grown into... this?

“Right, let’s get back to work. Yoh, I need you to...” Mr. Cheung turns around, only to find his underling not there. He looks into the one-way mirror. Sure enough, his officer is standing on the other side of it. “Oh, Christ...” he mutters under his breath, but right now he has no choice but to let the scene play out.

Feilong is standing in the far corner of the room with his back to the men. His head droops. His long black hair flows down his ever-straight back and down his face, concealing his expression. He is under no illusion that the men can’t see his face though, as he knows perfectly well that various security cameras leave no blind angle in this room.

Yoh has just entered the room and is standing just inside the door, in the oppposite corner to Feilong’s. He stands facing the other man’s back. And he speaks. “Nice move.”

The other man does not turn around, but he does raise his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His voice is strong, but hollow. Like he’s barely holding it together. Yoh would like to think that he’s faking all of this, but a deeper part of him knows the man is not.

“Using Tao like that. You didn’t need to see him. You needed us to see you see him.” Yoh continues nevertheless, “showing us your human side, letting us let down our guard. Drawing out time. What are you really planning? What’s on your mind?”

“Can’t you read my mind?” The long-haired man finally turns around. His movement is calculated to the millisecond. When his eyes meet Yoh’s, that warmth and that familiarity is so real it shatters Yoh’s heart to smithereens. There he is, the man in that same stunning cheongsam that he wore on the night when Yoh told him he’d stolen his heart, the same man who whispered sweet nothings into his ear in the heat of their lovemaking merely hours ago, the same man he took one look at seven years ago, and vowed his life to. He knows every inch of that face, he knows the feel of that hair, he knows the corner of that mouth, he knows those soft lashes, he knows every sparkle and every shadow in those amethyst eyes. This man is real. His love is real. But sadly, this battle is also very real.

“Damn you look good in that uniform.” The man smiles, “you should never have taken it off.”

But then we would have never met. Yoh replies in his heart. He knows he doesn’t have to say it out loud, as the other man seems perfectly aware of what he’s thinking. “You want to know what I’m planning,” continues Feilong, as he slowly paces toward Yoh, “I’m planning on escaping this prison cell. I’m planning on taking my brother and his son with me when I go. I’m planning on how to get back at each and every one of you for making Tao cry like that. But most importantly, I’m planning on how to personally make the rest of your life a living hell where you’ll wish to God you never met me.”

“That will never happen.” Yoh confesses. He doesn’t care what his colleagues will think of him now. Feilong has to know.

They pause for a moment, Feilong standing in the centre of the room, facing Yoh who hasn’t moved throughout. The latter continues, “Besides, don’t be ridiculous. You are not leaving this room until you offer us something concrete to work with.”

“You wanna bet?” The confidence in that playful tone almost makes Yoh doubt himself, but... no, no way he’s seriously plotting on breaking out of here. That’s too outrageous, even for Liu Feilong. But then... why is he so at ease? This silent aura around him is beyond his signature composure, there is something malicious about it, like a wild panther crouching for a strike. Feilong may seem passive, but up until now they’ve all been playing _his_ game. It can’t go on like this.

He takes a step forward. “Feilong,” the other man’s brow arches, “do you think your father loved you?”

“What?” Feilong knots his brows in displeasure.

“I don’t think he did.” Yoh continues, “he let Yanyan have his way with you as long as he did because he didn’t care, he turned his back when his son disrespected you, used you, humiliated you, because you were never a son to him. You were his tool. Nothing more.”

“That’s enough.” Feilong warns, but Yoh presses on. “You think Baishe is the only thing he left you with. It’s not. He left you with a ruined life and you’re refusing to get out of it!”

“Shut up!” Feilong hurls himself at Yoh, who grasps him firmly by the wrists, hard enough to make him wince.

The entire war room stands up.

“Do you think, if he were alive, and you are here, he would rescue you, or send in an assassin to finish you?” Yoh whispers into Feilong’s face. Those amethyst eyes open wide. “You know the answer, don’t you? You had your own chance of assassinating Yanyan when I told you we got him, but you didn’t, still have not. Kill him, and our leverage is gone. Why can’t you do it?” His grip tightens. “Because you love him. Despite everything, despite the pain and the suffer he put you through, you love him because you think he’s family. Now you tell me, is that what your father or Liu Yanyan himself would have done with you?”

“Let go.” Feilong’s voice is pained. Yoh instinctively loosens the grip a little, but at the same time, he grabs a handful of the Dragon’s beautiful hair.

“Why do you still keep your hair long?” He demands. Feilong darts him a startled look, as if the question really caught him off guard. “Your father is long gone. There’s no one around to appreciate it. Why do you still keep it the way he liked it?” He can see tears welling up in the Dragon’s fathomless eyes. A part of him wants to take him in his arms and kiss away those tears, but he can’t, he won’t. He has to believe in what he’s doing, or all is lost.

He pulls the shuddering Dragon in. “Because a major part of you still wants to please him. You don’t really care about Baishe, or its money and its power, what you want is someone to love you. So bad that even an illusion of it will do.”

“How dare you...”

“Is that why you are so obsessed with Asami?” The question comes as a surprise to them both. Yoh did not expect himself to bring personal issues into this, but for once in his life, his words ran faster than his ralitionality. He really wants to know. Feilong looks up at him in shock. “He made you feel like it’s real, but it all turned out to be a lie?”

“Shut up, Yoh... this is enough...” His Dragon tries to get away, those beautiful amethyst eyes bloodshot with rage and misty with tears, but Yoh does not relent. Damned if he should stop now.

“For once you thought you could escape the Hell you were in, but he only pushed you deeper into it?”

“Shut up, please...” Yoh can feel the strength slowly being drained away from the Dragon’s body, and he catches him by the shoulder, shaking him, forcing him to look him in the eye.

“You loved him, and he used it against you. You should hate him for what he’s done, yet not only did you let him go time and again, you rushed to his side when he needed your help! Why do I get the feeling that you ENJOY being used?”

“Shut up!!!” Feilong screams. He pushes Yoh away with all the strength he got, and the bigger man falls to the floor, hitting the wall behind him, hard.

Someone in the war room makes to interfere, but Cheung stops him. “Wait.”

“You were right, you ARE Baishe,” Yoh speaks from his position on the floor, his tone calm and almost emotionless, “and the only way for you to truly break free is to burn its marks off of you with your own hands.” He gets up and walks up to Feilong in two strides. He takes his right arm and pushes the sleeve up to reveal the snake tattoo on the inner side of his forearm. “You deserve more than this. Tao deserves more than this. Give yourself a second chance. Unlike them, I’m not going anywhere.”

With an exhausted sigh, the formidable Dragon of Baishe falls to the floor and Yoh immediately catches him in his arms. The man is as light as feather. Feilong starts sobbing into his chest, his cuffed wrists pressing so hard against Yoh’s shoulder that he’s sure they are bruising him. And even though he knows they are being watched, Yoh couldn’t help but put his palm against the back of his lover’s head, and comfort him. “Shh... I’m right here. I’m right here.”

“Exactly.” breathes Feilong. By the time Yoh realises something’s off in that tone, it is too late.

————

The rescue happened so fast it’s a blur of events in Yoh’s head. Even now, as he’s sitting in the helicopter, and the man of his dreams is dressing up the wound on his right shoulder, he can still hear the distant gunshots and his commanding officer’s angry yelling, and he cannot believe he did what he did.

He had dreamt of becoming a police officer ever since he was small. He went to the Police College at 18, and accepted to work undercover with an equal measure of fear and excitement pulsating in his heart when he was 19. As part of the mission, he had to be expelled from the College. And even though he knew it was only a part of his future greater glory, the action itself pained him to no end. And yet today, he had betrayed all that he had believed in, all that he solemnly vowed to protect, by taking a bullet for a depraved criminal and helping him escape. And not just any criminal. Liu Feilong, the underworld gouverner of Hong Kong — some might say, China.

He looks out the window. The night is dark. A fine mist is rising above the ocean. He can’t see farther than a few meters in this inpenatrable black, but judging from the wind, he decides they are flying north. Russia, most likely, where they still have some friends.

The cabin is completely silent for a while. Tao is sleeping in his seat, curled up and bundled up in a warm blanket. Feilong looks at him with tender eyes.

At long last, Yoh speaks, still looking out the window. “Did you know I was gonna turn?”

“I was hoping you would.” Feilong turns his head toward Yoh. His voice is smooth as velvet and whispery like the night.

Yoh cannot help but laugh. “By God, you’re good.” He turns to look at his cunning lover and finds it, as always, impossible to be mad at him. The guy could shoot him in both his knees and he’d still crawl toward him in worship.

The man in question helps Yoh into his shirt. “Truly, did you think you were the only ones capable of planting a mole?”

“No, but... No.” Yoh shakes his head.

“You just didn’t expect it to be Stephen.” Feilong buttons up his shirt.

“Seven years’ work. All for nothing. Like carrying water to the sea.”

“He’d been our man since my father’s time. Only the occasion never rose to engage him.”

“So you knew all along that I was a mole?” Yoh looks at Feilong with incredulous eyes.

Feilong shrugs. “Since your first line spoken to me. What was it? ‘Are you alright?’ You asked, after saving me from the knifepoint. You saved me again tonight. I suppose I owe you two lifetimes.”

“You owe me a kiss, that’s for sure.” Forgetting what he had just gone through, Yoh pulls the beguiling beauty in to engage him in a long, drugging kiss.

“You know, Stephen once asked me how deep I was involved with you.” Yoh says after breaking the kiss. He watches as Feilong moves away to light a cigarette. He lights two and brings one back for Yoh.

“And what did you say?” His Dragon lover puts the cigarette between his lips.

“I said... I don’t want to think about it.” Yoh smokes his cigarette with his left hand, and looks out the window again as he reprises these words. The conversation between him and Stephen happened when they were both out smoking too, and now, one is executed on site, the other is fleeing the entire span of China, a corrupt cop, a gigantic failure in the entire history of double agency.

“Hmm.” Feilong smiles, quietly puffing out his smoke.

“Why didn’t you kill me from the start?” Yoh asks.

Feilong turns around. His eyes meet Yoh’s. “I should have, shouldn’t I? But apparently I don’t always make the wisest choice.” He chuckles to himself, then speaks more seriously, “it was useful at first to have a cop trying so hard to blend in, to prove his worth. You were willing to do a lot of things that even real bad guys would not. Besides, cop or no cop, you were not from within the organisation, and I could use that at the time. And then... I just sort of liked your company. Like I said, not always the wisest choice.”

In the interrogation room, Feilong had seized the fleeting moment when Yoh held him in his arms to knee him in the guts and take out his gun, the one he always kept behind his back, thrown the steel chair in his chest hard enough to make him puke, and taken him hostage. At the exact same moment, some officers rushed in the war room to report that Liu Yanyan was gone.

The rest was history.

“Do you plan to finish him this time?” Yoh asks, referring to Yanyan.

Feilong takes a moment before he responds. “Right now he’s probably drifting somewhere in the middle of the South China Sea. If Fate will have him live, then he’ll live. If not, well, people in our business die young, and he’s led a colourful life. I wouldn’t complain if I were him.” His eyes drift into the void, and his voice trails off.

Yoh gently strokes a strand of Feilong’s silky black hair. “I’m sorry I pulled your hair earlier.”

Feilong turns around, his mind back to reality, and he smiles. “Don’t worry. It’s all part of the show, isn’t it?”

Yes, in a way, thinks Yoh. Only he thought he was the director, but it turned out he was only a minor actor, and one who didn’t get his script at that.

His reverie is broken when, to his great surprise, his proud lover lowers that beautiful head to lay it in his lap, and commands softly, “stroke my hair.”

Yoh does so. He feels his Dragon’s breathing slowly wind down. It’s been a long day, and an even longer night. He suddenly feels fatigue crashing down on him. But before he allows himself to drift into unconsciousness, he bends down and whispers into his lover’s ear, as he has done for many nights and hopes to do for many more - “Goodnight, sweetheart.”

But his lover seems to be already in dreamland. 

Yoh smiles himself a wan but satisfied smile, and leans back into his seat to rest. 

That’s when he hears the Dragon murmur. “The hair.”

“What?”

“Why did you say there’s no one around to appreciate it? There’s you, isn’t there?” His voice is already trailing off, and Yoh believes this time he is truly asleep.

“Yes, my love,” he leans down and kisses his goddess on that gorgeous hair, “there’s always me.”

The aircraft flies north through the gathering storm. The dawn is yet hours away.


End file.
